


Stargazing

by PickleJuice (bhunks)



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Black Paladin Lance (Voltron), Female Pronouns for Pidge | Katie Holt, M/M, PTSD, Post-War, Red Paladin Keith (Voltron), Three Years Later, everyone has PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-17
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2019-04-24 09:44:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,365
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14352927
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bhunks/pseuds/PickleJuice
Summary: On a mission with the Blade, Keith was captured and tortured by Haggar.He finds himself with one person to talk to.(Nothing anyone says will ever change my mind- everyone has PTSD because of the war.)





	Stargazing

He’d woken up from a nightmare. Screaming, bloody, in tears. Flashes of blinding white pain, blacking out, being starved. How long had he been there? Days? A couple weeks? He still hadn’t asked. He was too afraid to.

He didn’t blame Allura for hating the Galra or for being so distrustful. He understood it. He felt the same raw, burning rage for every single one of them. 

Keith was sitting on the observation deck, watching the stars, trying to take his mind off his injuries, when Lance walked in.

“We did it,” he said drily. “We defeated the big, bad, wolf.”

Keith huffed, like he found that funny but didn’t have the energy to laugh. “Yeah. We did.”

Lance sat next to him and glanced down. Keith wished he hadn’t. “I’m sorry,” Lance said. 

“Not your fault,” Keith answered, drumming his fingers on his new leg. “None of it is.” He thinks back to the nightmare he woke up from. “It’s theirs. But they’re dead now.” He clenched his fist. “And if they aren’t, I’ll find them and strangle them myself.”

He felt suddenly ashamed of being so violent and raw. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Lance said quickly. “You have nothing to be sorry for.  _ They _ do.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“I can’t think about it without feeling… without feeling like…” Lance trailed off and looked to the other stars. 

Keith didn’t have to ask what ‘it’ was. 

\------------

_ “Keith!” _

_ Choking. Crying. Limp. Mouth not moving. _

_ “Keith- fuck- come on, come on, Keith, please still be alive… Red is waiting for you, she followed me, she misses you… Christ, the fucking Marmora… Keith!” _

_ Eyes roll back. Black out? his mind asks. _

_ Can’t, won’t, can’t, stay awake, stay alive _

_ Free, unbound, weak, tired, thirsty _

_ “Come on Keith…” _

_ Shield. Help. Love. _

_ \--------------------------- _

It took Keith almost a full minute to stop replaying the events in his head. When he finally came out of it, he was crying, and Lance was panicking. “Keith! Are you okay?”

“I know what you mean.” Keith felt like he was choking. “About not being able to think about it. I get random flashbacks… Lance, they didn’t even… they didn’t give me anesthesia. She wanted you guys… and I couldn’t just tell her… but then…” Keith’s eyes burned with tears. “I did, anyway.”

“Keith,” Lance whispered. “You don’t have to talk about it.”

“I do,” Keith whispered back. “I have to, or it feels like it swallows me whole and I’m  _ drowning _ but no one can help me and I start sweating and crying and-” He cut himself off abruptly. “I never thanked you.”

“You got out of the cryopod two days ago,” Lance said. “And you’ve had a lot to absorb in a short amount of time. Besides, you don’t need to thank me. You would’ve done the same for me in a heartbeat.”

“I’m glad you know that,” Keith said. “I was scared you thought I hated you for a long time. I never did, you know.”

“I never hated you, either,” Lance admitted, looking straight ahead, scared to make eye contact, which seemed silly given how much he’d seen in the last three years of his life. “I actually admired you. A lot. Maybe resented you. But I never hated you.”

Keith smiled. Even if it was just for a moment, he wasn’t thinking about his leg, or the millions of deaths he’d seen and caused. He wasn’t thinking about the times Takashi would scream and cry in his sleep in the room next to Keith’s until he woke himself up. He wasn’t thinking about Allura and Coran, and how much trauma they’d already endured and would have to endure for the rest of their lives. He wasn’t thinking about Hunk and Lance’s families, and how they probably assumed their sons were dead.

He was thinking about Lance. And how they’d destroyed the Galra central command. Once Lance had helped Keith into Red, she’d gone back to the castle. Shiro had met him in the hangar, but Keith didn’t remember that part. He didn’t remember vomiting blood, or the look on Shiro’s face when Coran said the cryopod might not be able to save him.

Lucky him.

“I know you don’t want to talk about it,” Keith said, in a voice so quiet Lance barely heard him, “but I’m scared it’s going to kill me if I don’t.” He didn’t want to say it out loud, but he needed  _ someone _ to know, and he didn’t want to weigh Takashi down even more than he already had.  _ Lance doesn’t deserve to be weighed down, either. _

“You can come to me if you feel that way. My door is always open.”

“I already feel that way,” Keith said, somewhat resigned. “Sometimes I just lay in bed for hours because, I mean, what am I going to do? Train? For what? Why should I eat when so many refugees are still hungry? Why should I sleep if I wake up an hour later anyway, because I’m sweating and shaking?”

“Because you’re important to us,” Lance answered quietly. “And I would miss you.”

Keith waits for him to correct himself hastily, to say ‘ _ we _ would miss you,’ but he doesn’t. He looks Keith straight in the eyes like he knows what he said and he meant it.

“You know,” Lance continued, “I get it. I mean, I felt the same way. For a long time. I stopped talking to people. I slept almost 15 hours every single day. I started eating so much I almost threw up. Do you remember that?”

“Yeah,” Keith said. He felt a surge of terror because Lance had been so  _ different _ . “I remember it because I care about you. I noticed that you never came to train with me anymore. I noticed that you were almost never out of your room. I saw you in the kitchen, usually between 1 and 4am, with a huge amount of food, and then sometimes I saw you walk back into your room. I noticed…” Keith turned slightly pink, not just because of the word vomit. “I noticed you stopped flirting with girls at the celebratory parties we went to.”

“Yeah. I did.” Lance shrugged. “I mean, we aren’t exactly the same. But I know the sense of hopelessness you’re talking about. And now?” He swallowed. “The fear. The constant, exhausting fear.”

“Have you talked to anyone else about it?”

“No,” Lance sighed. “Pidge and Hunk are… I mean, they’ve got their fair share of trauma. Pidge isn’t good with comforting people. And Hunk shuts down the conversation if I bring it up. He’s like me, I guess, but a bit worse off. Scared to talk about it.”

“I’m scared to talk to Shiro,” Keith said. “I mean, I guess he could help me accept the leg and all that. But I feel like… I’m scared to make it worse. It was bad enough when I blacked out in Red.”

“Allura and Coran talk to each other more than anyone else,” Lance said. “She tries to talk to me. Sometimes she talks about her girlfriend from Altea, but then her voice catches and she has to leave because it brings her back to just before she went in the cryopod, when she was watching her people burn to death. Sometimes she tries to talk about everything we’ve seen, but it triggers panic attacks.”

“I’m glad we can talk,” Keith said. “So it’s not all pent up. I mean… I trust you.”

“I trust you, too,” Lance said, his smile lopsided. “That’s why you’re my right hand man, Keith.”

They stayed quiet for a moment, watching a couple shooting stars. Oddly enough, Keith didn’t feel an overwhelming sense of  _ I’ve said too much _ or  _ Shut up and leave Lance alone. _ He cleared his throat only somewhat nervously and put his hand over Lance’s.

Lance looked up, surprise written all over his face. “Keith?”

“Can we…” He struggled to find the right words. “Can we try to make this work?”

Lance looked like he was tinged pink. He looked down at Keith’s hand, looked back up into Keith’s eyes, smiled, and said, “I’d like that.”


End file.
